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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 4035494" data-attributes="member: 2067">I said the OP's examples felt lazy and they, to me, lack creativity. They feel this way because they circumvent the rules, rather than working with them, and part of the reason I play D&D rather than write stories with my friends is because I enjoy working with the rules. A DM who doesn't work according to the rules (which is cheating, even if it's allowed cheating, even if it's cheating that makes the game better for some groups) isn't a DM I would enjoy playing with. To me, the abandonment of internal consistency and the resort to fiat scuttle believability and make me feel impotent as a player.I stand by all those statements, but I fail to see how my opinion really criticises anyone, rather than pointing out that my demands for believability in my games might just be unreasonably demanding for some DM's and for some players. I accept this. It's okay. People can go have fun seeking their narrative game all they want. I won't. I don't want. There are many very good reasons why I don't want it. This doesn't mean my games are lousy or that I am a problem player. It just means that your game doesn't amuse me. My game probably wouldn't amuse you. I'm not particularly offended by that.I wouldn't want it to be. I don't really want a hardcore simulation game. What I want is a rules system that everyone obeys at all times. This includes rules for when fiat or making up new rules are okay, but mostly it includes rules for describing what happens in the game. When people get injured, they take damage. This is a rule for the game. If we abandon the rule, we're not playing the game anymore, in my mind. And if we're not playing a game here, how about we pick up the Wii and play a few rounds of Smash Brothers instead, because what I want to do is play a game.Maybe what you want to do is tell a good story (and use a game system to do that). That's cool. Have fun. I wouldn't. I'm far too harsh a critic on storytelling for D&D to ever really satisfy me.Indeed, so you can see why I was surprised when suddenly I was accused of having badwrongfun. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />Yeah, but that doesn't get at the fact that my heroic adventurer is deathly affraid of these horses and their slippery saddles of heroic doom, now, because obviously being able to face a terrifying dragon's jaws doesn't mean you also can't just have a fatal 'whoopsiedaisy.'Behaving in-character, 20th level heroes dying from falling out of saddles creates a truly un-fun experience for me, because I need to now play my character as if he could die from falling out of a saddle. This would, in short order, lead to a lot of pretty absurd behavior on the part of my character. "Hmm...the necromancer king is giving us some trouble. Maybe we can give him a gift, perhaps some sort of horse, that can then endanger his life!"But Batman, again, isn't really in the same heroic model that Superman is, which is why Superman is a better comparison. Superman doesn't just fly as a matter of narrative convenience, he actually flies. He has heat vision. He is invulnerable to bullets. These are literal truths about him.In D&D, a 20th level fighter can avoid death from the jaws of a dragon. Actually, not just as a matter of narrative convenience. That same 20th level fighter can kill the necromancer-king. Not just because the DM thinks it would be cool, but because he can actually walk up to the Necromancer King and put something pointy in his gut. That fighter has a cleric friend who can raise people from the dead. Not just because it makes for a good game, but because he can actually raise people from the dead. These are literal truths about these characters that don't go away just because they aren't on the scene.Batman knows he can step out of the shower without slipping and falling and cracking his head and dying. He knows he can probably take Gotham's junior martial arts champion in a fight. Despite the fact that, realistically, an awkward push from the kid could cause Batman to sprawl face-first into a chair. A 20th level D&D fighter knows that a short fall is something he can walk away from. Despite the fact that, realistically, a normal person doesn't. Superman knows he can fire lasers with his eyes. Even though, realistically, no one else can. None of these are narrative expedience; these are all true statements about these characters. These abilities don't go away just because they're not the center of attention. "If all you want to do is build, why not build something useful?""If all you want to do is tell a story, why not write a novel?""If all you want to do is simulate a world, why not play Runequest?"I mean, that's why I'm posting in this thread, isn't it? Because I can, currently, use D&D to indulge something I find very satisfying, and I'm concerned, in the next edition, that I will find it less satisfying, and I am an opinionated little jerk who has a platform to voice those concerns on.I'm not telling you to go write a novel (though I might say that to someone who, in my games, wanted special treatment for the sake of the story). I'm telling you that what you seek from the game isn't the same thing that I seek, and that in getting to what you seek, you will make the game less fun for me. And you're telling me what I seek is wrong?It's a mixture of a lot more than that, and what individual groups decide to place first and foremost is largely a matter of what the individual players (including the DM) want to get out of it.I'm concerned that 4e will make it harder to get what I want out of the game. It might not, but the purpose of this thread seems to be "You are wrong if you want the rules to be more than just an abstract description of a given moment."I do want more than that. I'm not wrong. My opinion is valid, and shouting me down, telling me I'm trying to be simulationist, telling me I'm a bad player and a boring DM and that my goals are absurd, that D&D never did what I wanted it to, and that my fun is a slave to the rules isn't really going to change what I (or many others) enjoy about the game.I have every confidence that the 4e designers are trying for a middle ground, that they are well aware of players like me, and that they are trying to keep it in mind as they design. I think they are taking steps away from 3e's heavy simulation, and I think this is a good thing in moderation. I don't have a major problem with 4e as it stands, though I do have some (what I see as) completely legitimate concerns.So if you tell me, as the OP did, that I'm just thinking about things all wrong, I'll tell  you, as I did in my first post, that thinking about things in the way proposed would not satisfy me. If you tell me I'm wrong to be unsatisfied, I'll defend it. If 4e concieves of the rules like the OP did, I won't be satisfied with the game.Fortunately, I don't believe that this will be the case, though I think it will allow for this thought more readily than 3e did.</blockquote>

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